Matthew Feldman (born 1977) is an Anglo-American historian, literary critic and political scientist. [1] As Emeritus Professor in the Modern History of Ideas at Teesside University, and Professorial Fellow at the University of York, Feldman specializes in fascism and the far right in Europe and the United States. He consults on neo-Nazi terrorism, hate crimes and radical right extremism for Academic Consulting Services. [2] [3] [4] [5]
Feldman is the author of more than a dozen books on political extremism, and a dozen books that relate to the leading modernist writers Ezra Pound and Samuel Beckett, including Politics, Intellectuals and Faith (2020); Falsifying Beckett (2015); Ezra Pound's Fascist Propaganda, 1935–1945 (2013); and Beckett's Books (2006). Feldman is currently at work on a global history of fascism.
Feldman was awarded a BA in modern history and English in 1999, an MA in the history of fascism in 2000, and a PhD in 2004 for a thesis entitled "Sourcing 'Aporetics': An Empirical Study on Philosophical Influences in the Development of Samuel Beckett's Writings". All his degrees were completed at Oxford Brookes University. [1] [6]
After teaching history part-time at Oxford Brookes and the University of Northampton, Feldman was appointed in 2008 as senior lecturer in 20th-century history at Northampton. In 2012 he became Reader in Contemporary History at Teesside and in June 2014 Professor in the Modern History of Ideas. [6] As of 2017 he was co-director of Teesside's Centre for Fascist, Anti-fascist and Post-fascist Studies (CFAPS). [7] Since 2018, Feldman has been Director of Academic Consulting Services.
In addition to his studies of Pound and Beckett, Feldman's activities as a literary critic include co-editing two series from Bloomsbury Publishing: Historicizing Modernism, along with Erik Tonning and David Tucker ; and Modernist Archives, with Erik Tonning and Natasha Periyan.
Feldman's historical work includes studies of historical fascism and the far right, and also pays attention to the politics of language in the rhetoric of the radical right [8] and in Holocaust denial. [9]
Feldman has also undertaken more public work, including media appearances and op-eds, and featured as a keynote or featured speaker on the far right in several venues. [10] [11] Feldman has worked for the UK's National Expert Witness Agency, authoring 22 expert reports and appearing as witness in 20 trials. [12]
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. Opposed to anarchism, democracy, pluralism, egalitarianism, liberalism, socialism, and Marxism, fascism is placed on the far-right wing within the traditional left–right spectrum.
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a collaborator in Fascist Italy and the Salò Republic during World War II. His works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and his 800-page epic poem The Cantos.
Neo-fascism is a post-World War II far-right ideology that includes significant elements of fascism. Neo-fascism usually includes ultranationalism, ultraconservatism, racial supremacy, populism, authoritarianism, nativism, xenophobia, and anti-immigration sentiment, sometimes with economic liberal issues, as well as opposition to social democracy, parliamentarianism, Marxism, capitalism, communism, and socialism. As with classical fascism, it occasionally proposes a Third Position as an alternative to market capitalism.
William Hugh Kenner was a Canadian literary scholar, critic and professor. He published widely on Modernist literature with particular emphasis on James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Samuel Beckett. His major study of the period, The Pound Era, argued for Pound as the central figure of Modernism, and is considered one of the most important works on the topic.
Roger David Griffin is a British professor of modern history and political theorist at Oxford Brookes University, England. His principal interest is the socio-historical and ideological dynamics of fascism, as well as various forms of political or religious fanaticism.
Clerical fascism is an ideology that combines the political and economic doctrines of fascism with clericalism. The term has been used to describe organizations and movements that combine religious elements with fascism, receive support from religious organizations which espouse sympathy for fascism, or fascist regimes in which clergy play a leading role.
Eustace Clarence Mullins Jr. was an American white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, propagandist, Holocaust denier, and writer. A disciple of the poet Ezra Pound, his best-known work is The Secrets of The Federal Reserve, in which he alleged that several high-profile bankers had conspired to write the Federal Reserve Act for their own nefarious purposes, and then induced Congress to enact it into law. The Southern Poverty Law Center described him as "a one-man organization of hate".
The Third Position is a set of neo-fascist political ideologies that were first described in Western Europe following the Second World War. Developed in the context of the Cold War, it developed its name through the claim that it represented a third position between the capitalism of the Western Bloc and the communism of the Eastern Bloc.
John Warburton Beckett was a British politician who was a Labour Party MP from 1924 to 1931. During the 1930s, he joined the fascist movement, first in the British Union of Fascists and later as a founder of the National Socialist League and British People's Party. During World War II, he was interned in Britain.
The Republican Fascist Party was a political party in Italy led by Benito Mussolini during the German occupation of Central and Northern Italy and was the sole legal representative party of the Italian Social Republic. The PFR was the successor to the National Fascist Party but was more influenced by pre-1922 early radical fascism and anti-monarchism, as its members considered King Victor Emmanuel III to be a traitor after his signing of the surrender to the Allies.
The Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista, frequently shortened to just "FET", was the sole legal party of the Francoist regime in Spain. It was created by General Francisco Franco in 1937 as a merger of the fascist Falange Española de las JONS with the monarchist neo-absolutist and integralist Catholic Traditionalist Communion belonging to the Carlist movement. In addition to the resemblance of names, the party formally retained most of the platform of FE de las JONS and a similar inner structure. In force until April 1977, it was rebranded as the Movimiento Nacional in 1958.
Lieutenant-Colonel Graham Seton Hutchison was a British First World War army officer, military theorist, author of both adventure novels and non-fiction works and fascist activist. Seton Hutchison became a celebrated figure in military circles for his tactical innovations during the First World War but would later become associated with a series of fringe fascist movements which failed to capture much support even by the standards of the far right in Britain in the interbellum period. He made a contribution to First World War fiction with his espionage novel, The W Plan.
British fascism is the form of fascism which is promoted by some political parties and movements in the United Kingdom. It is based on British ultranationalism and imperialism and had aspects of Italian fascism and Nazism both before and after World War II.
CasaPound Italia is an Italian neo-fascist movement. It was formerly a political party, born as a network of far-right social centres arising from the occupation of a state-owned building by squatters in the neighborhood of Esquilino in Rome on 26 December 2003. Subsequently, CasaPound spread with other instances of squatting, demonstrations and various initiatives, becoming a political movement.
Anti-fascism is a political movement in opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals. Beginning in European countries in the 1920s, it was at its most significant shortly before and during World War II, where the Axis powers were opposed by many countries forming the Allies of World War II and dozens of resistance movements worldwide. Anti-fascism has been an element of movements across the political spectrum and holding many different political positions such as anarchism, communism, pacifism, republicanism, social democracy, socialism and syndicalism as well as centrist, conservative, liberal and nationalist viewpoints.
Roger Eatwell is a British academic currently an Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Bath.
The Era Fascista was a calendar era used in Fascist Italy. The March on Rome, or more precisely the accession of Mussolini as prime minister on 29 October 1922, is day 1 of Anno I of the Era Fascista. The calendar was introduced in 1926 and became official in Anno V (1927). Each year of the Era Fascista was an Anno Fascista, abbreviated A.F.
The expatriate American poet Ezra Pound recorded or composed hundreds of broadcasts in support of fascism for Italian radio during World War II and the Holocaust in Italy. Based in Italy since 1924, Pound collaborated with the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini and expressed support for Adolf Hitler. Written at first for EIAR, and later for a new radio station in the Salò Republic, a Nazi puppet state in northern Italy, the broadcasts contained deeply antisemitic and racist material. They were transmitted to England, central Europe, and the United States, mostly in English, but also in Italian, German, and French.
If This Be Treason ... is a 33-page booklet published privately in Italy in early 1948 by Olga Rudge, mistress of the American poet Ezra Pound. Pound, who lived in Italy with his wife from 1924 to 1945, was indicted in absentia for treason in 1943 by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia after he made hundreds of radio broadcasts, pro-Axis and deeply antisemitic, on behalf of Fascist Italy during World War II and the Holocaust in Italy. The title phrase had previously been used in a speech by Patrick Henry in 1765.